Horizons - How is it that two people who know each other well can look at the same thing and have completely different experiences of it? Having good intentions to come to an agreement simply isn't enough.

The Franciscan Clarist congregation has expelled Sr. Lucy Kalappura, one of its members who had questioned the official church's indifference to a nun who says a Catholic bishop raped her. The congregation cited other reasons for expelling Kalappura, such as buying a car without getting the required permission from her superiors and violating other rules.

The mass shootings in Gilroy, California; El Paso, Texas; and Dayton, Ohio, have prompted women religious across the country to demand specific action to curb gun violence.

Enough! I don't want to hear offers of thoughts and prayers. I don't want to see video of people hiding or running for their lives, hands in the air, after unspeakable horror. I don't want to see first responders in full gear with weapons drawn. I want rage! I don't want to hear goodbye phone calls or see goodbye texts. I want RAGE! 

LCWR 2019 - As a Sister of St. Joseph of Orange, "I love to connect people to our mission," Sr. Jayne Helmlinger says. Colleagues say her experience leading a community of increasing diversity will serve her well in a national role with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

LCWR 2019 - With an expanded guest list "to widen the circle of insight," the 2019 assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious will be held Aug. 13-16 event in Scottsdale, Arizona. The theme for this year's annual event is "Imagining leadership in a global community," an approach to bring sessions' disparate subjects — such as racism, climate change and strategic planning — into a cohesive whole.

Loreto Sr. Teresia Wamuyu Wachira of Kenya and French Bishop Marc Stenger have been elected to the shared leadership of the global Catholic peace organization Pax Christi International.

Poet Theodore Roethke calls worms the "intrepid scholars of the soil." For hundreds of millions of years they've sculpted Earth's hostile rock into forest floors and garden beds — laid out welcome mats with menus for strangers who would never breathe, or eat, or see, or think without them. 

As a volunteer observer for the U.S. National Weather Service, Benedictine Sr. Marva Hoeckelman records temperatures each day at South Dakota's Mother of God Monastery. The work is simple but profound for Hoeckelman, who also writes nature poetry.

It was during this time of deep grief (at age 24) that I first encountered St. Angela Merici. What did impress me was that Angela encountered terrible grief early in life. By the time she was 15, both her parents had died. A few years later, her beloved sister also died. How on Earth could Angela still trust God in the midst of so much loss?